Comfort in an Unexpected Place
by rosecanon
Summary: The old gang returns to Hogwarts after the final battle to finish up and prepare for their NEWTs. jk rowling etc etc
1. Exposition

After the final battle, with much of the school destroyed and most of the students evacuated, plenty of the staff dead and the magical world in an uproar, there was, of course, no talk of finishing out the school year. The year spent under Voldemort's puppets could hardly have been considered adequate preparation for the fifth and seventh years who had such important tests to sit anyway. It was decided that students in these years should return to school the following September to make up for missed education under a skeleton staff, while the rebuilding process would continue around them, and the rest of the school would return following Christmas break and continue in an abridged version of the studies they should have completed the previous year, to compensate for the time and competency of which they had been robbed. All of this was settled in a rush meeting of the school board, attended by temporary headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, who would also be continuing in the role of Transfiguration professor for the first half of the year, after which she hoped to be replaced in the more senior of positions, as she considered teaching a higher calling than administrational duties.

As for the students, three in particular, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, were grateful for the opportunity to catch up. They had, of course, not attended school at all the previous year, excepting the very notable day of the aforementioned battle. Several of their peers had also been kept from their lessons when forced into hiding, either by blood status or, like Neville Longbottom, rebelliousness.

When they returned to the school in September on an eerily quiet and nearly empty Hogwarts express, there was a still solidarity in the air that kept them present and calm, but in each pair of eyes there was a wariness that had slowly settled from the mixture of triumph and despair that had been there after losing so many loved ones in the defeat of the greatest enemy they had ever faced. The world in which they were now to learn and live was free of Lord Voldemort, but whether those who had ever accomplished it would share the freedom was in doubt. Hogwarts was a merry place, usually, and now it was soiled with murder and mayhem, some committed by their own wand tips, and almost all employing knowledge gained in its very halls.

The tiny crowd that stepped onto the platform glanced around for carriages but saw none, and there was neither surprise nor consternation in this. The students walked slowly up to the castle together, each fearing what scene would greet them on the other end.

"Oi, Harry!" a familiar and pleasing voice made Harry, Ron and Hermione stop and turn to see Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper and Care of Magical Creatures teacher lumbering up the road from Hogsmead, the nearby villiage. "Ron, Hermione! Glad ter be back? I'm certainly glad ter see yeh. 'S been a long summer, mos' o' the teachers and plenty o' others round working all day. Be nice to have some students to make it feel a bit cheerier. Feast tonight's gonna be brilliant! Wait till you see!"

The four of them now rounded the last of the trees between them and the castle and stopped among the rest of the students, already standing staring at the structure to which they were all so eternally attached. There was a long moments silence as they searched the surface facing them. It was the small, quavering voice of Colin Creevy that at last broke the silence. "but… its okay!" The crowd of students gave a great whoop and began applauding their school, which now stood, slightly altered but nonetheless intact and just as majestic and beautiful as ever.

"Now, now!" Hagrid hollered as the buzz died and the walk up to the school recommenced, at a much-increased rate. "Don' be expectin' too much. We been workin' hard and the outsides done but that's a bit deceivin'. There's lots more work on the inside." But the students were now approaching the front doors at a run, and as darkness began to fall on the pleasant night that just showed the first brisk signs of abandoning summer in favor of autumn, Harry Potter stepped back across the threshold into a place he could not help but think of as home.

The feast was, just as Hagrid had promised, quite an affair. The hall was decorated splendidly and there was a live band which featured a wizard who could not have been more than five feet tall slapping a bass that looked entirely ridiculous in his hands as it dwarfed him entirely, and an exceptionally large woman, both in height and girth, playing a set of drums, only half of which was recognizable as anything that might appear in a standard kit. They played, despite first impressions, exceptionally well, and were jazzy enough to fill the little dance floor laid before them perpetually throughout the entire affair. As there were only 34 students present, the usual long house tables had been abandoned and replaced with little circular tables in a semicircle facing the teacher's table. People sat as they pleased, and though most people's friends were in their own houses, simply because the opportunity existed, if nothing else, there were plenty of exceptions and cross-house talk was furthered even more by the pronouncement that they would all be sharing Hufflepuff's dormitory until the Christmas break and would, in a practical sense, exist as one house until that point. After the meal, the music stopped, the tables cleared and Professor McGonagall stood before them, smiling.

"It is not, of course, under the most desirable of circumstances that we meet here. I would have liked to celebrate our victory here a few months ago with a grander feast and all of our students in a full school. Unfortunately, the situation does not permit this. I would like to remind you, however, that though, by all rights, half of you should be gone now, on to the lives you will lead, and half of you should be advancing into the higher level learnings that will take you there, your sacrifice of a year has meant you get to do these things in a free and peaceful world. That is all the encouragement you should need. Good night, all. Hufflepuffs, if you would be so kind?"

The chairs scraped the floor and the decreased number echoed oddly in the nearly empty hall. The Hufflepuffs, always glad to be helpful, were leading a cheerful way to a good nights sleep.


	2. First Hints

The first day of classes was, surprisingly, fun. The feast and the finished exterior of the castle had lifted spirits and though the new schedule was a bit odd, owing to the fact that there were only four class size groups of students to be taught and only McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, Slughorn, Binns and Hagrid teaching, and the last two only teaching the fifth years, it was fairly regular in a very un-hogwarts way. The classrooms, moreover, aside from Sprout and Hagrid, were all now located on the same stretch of corridor on the first floor.

The half of the seventh years that Harry, Ron and Hermione were lumped into got an extra surprise on the third day of class during a Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson from McGonagall, (the other half had it from Flitwick.) Halfway through the lesson, the door creaked open and all the heads in the room swiveled to it. There was a ruffle as some people drew cautious breath, others stifled laughs and others still turned back to the front of the class to ignore the newcomer as thoroughly as possible. Hermione fit into this last category, while Ron fit into the second. Harry, on the other hand, merely narrowed his eyes, curious.

"Mr. Malfoy." Professor McGonagall's tone was perfectly welcoming, though it took her a second to find the words. "Nice of you to join us. We were just discussing the finer points of identifying someone who has been imperiused." She swished her wand and a desk appeared in the front row, where there was a space, though the desk, perhaps due to Professor McGonagall's inattention, sat slightly apart from the others. "Miss Granger was enlightening us…?" She looked inquiringly at Hermione, who hesitated.

"I was saying, the security questions recommended in the ministry pamphlet that went around two years ago would be an excellent idea, in general, except that everyone knew to do them, and so the death eaters knew they had to get around them. It would be foolish to imperius someone or impersonate them without getting their security questions out of them somehow. In the end it's not something you can get out of a book at all, you've just got to feel it. If you know enough about it you can just tell by the eyes, especially if it's someone you're close to. Also, it might help to have a couple security questions up your sleeve that aren't prediscussed, just some obscure thing the person alone could know, and save them for moments of doubt."

"Well, Miss Granger, that is a very well rounded answer." Professor McGonagall smiled approval. "I see recent events have altered your perspective a bit. I hope all in ways as positive as this. Miss Granger is correct, I fear, to contradict the text on this issue. In times of peace as we now so happily enjoy, a simple security question for each family member will suffice, but in more troubled times such as we recently experienced…"

The lesson went on in the new format, which Harry found refreshing. Classes had become a discussion, especially when it came to Defense lessons. They had fought and won together. He found the Socratic method much more effective than the straightforward lectures of previous years. He was however, not entirely clued in to this particular lesson. He found his eyes drifting over to Draco Malfoy every few minutes and lingering on a face full of new and intriguing features.

It was not a haughty, arrogant boy who sat in the corner desk. It was a broken, guilty man. Harry had seen pride there, and fear, but this new look of shame and apprehension was totally foreign. Malfoy was not looking around the room, no matter how many eyes were on him, and he was not looking at McGonagall, but staring at the corner of her desk, or down at his own. He looked out of place and lost.

After the lesson, he was first out of the room. It was the last lesson of the day and they did not see him again until dinner, when he slinked in at the end and tried to sit off by himself. Blaise Zabini spotted him halfway through the meal and stood up. Harry watched closely, not listening to Ron going on about the food as usual. Zabini just sort of stared at Malfoy, chewing his lip. Harry understood his ambivalence. The Zabinis had not been connected publicly to Voldemort except through friends of the family who were death eaters. There was no known criminal act committed by any member of his family, and that was a serious blessing. It was hard for Voldemort's sympathizers, and if you could stay out of suspicion, you did it. After a full minute, Zabini slowly reseated himself. Next to Harry, Hermione let out a little gasp. Harry looked at her only to see her returning to her pie and agreeing with Ron that it was exceptional, but Harry caught her looking back over at Malfoy a few minutes later and saw that she, like Zabini, was chewing her lip.

The next three months saw a general air of relaxation in the castle. The students were helping out when they felt like it, and it turned out to be a fun job, though challenging, readying the castle for inhabitation. While the structure had been entirely restored over the summer, a large section of the castle, including two corridors of classrooms, three teacher's quarters, a large bathroom and a very large section of stairwell, had to be refurnished and decorated. Professor Flitwick seized an opportunity to give some practical lessons by setting them loose on one aspect of a project at a time, giving them a helpful spell to speed the work, which all of them would then know very well by the end of the day.

As there were only four remaining Slytherins in the seventh year and none but Malfoy were in Harry, Ron and Hermione's section, he was always set apart from the group, as he had been that first day in McGonagall's class. He kept so quiet, in fact, that after two and a half months of class with him, Harry expressed with surprise that he had yet to hear him speak a word.

"Yes, well, he's got no friends to speak of here." Hermione sighed. "Pansy Parkinson found herself a nice fit Ravenclaw to hold hands with and it looks like Zabini is too chicken to talk to one of his old mates. I don't think Bullstrode ever had much to do with him, actually. But, as we've seen, if Crabbe and Goyle were here, that wouldn't necessarily mean he had friends anyway."

"Good! Serves him right, dozy bugger." Ron stuck his tongue out at the back of Malfoy's head on the other side of the wide stairwell where he was hanging a painting with one of Flitwick's spells. "Look at him! He's spent the whole class putting that painting up and taking it down. I've done five! Hermione must have done twenty! Useless, he is." He slung his arm around Hermione's shoulder, but she shrugged it off and walked around the edge of the stairwell, squeezing her way past Neville with encouraging words of praise.

"What is she doing!?" Ron asked, exasperated. "And why wont she let me touch her? I swear, being her boyfriend and being her best friend are more of less the same thing. She only lets me kiss her when we're alone. It's weird!"

"Actually," Harry smiled, "Just because most of your previous experience was in front of the entire house doesn't make it that odd. She's a private person. Ginny likes not to be seen but she also likes the risk, like sneaking off to have a go right in the middle of—OUCH! Oh, right, she's your sister. Um, sorry."

"What's she saying to him anyway?" Ron turned his attention, after a menacing nod, back to Hermione and Malfoy. "Wish we had some extendable ears, eh?"

"Uh oh. Doesn't look like it's going too well…" Harry craned his neck Hermione's voice got louder and louder, though the words were still indistinguishable, and watched as Malfoy's face got redder and redder with each retort. Finally culminating when Hermione broke suddenly from her angry posture and beamed. She patted Malfoy on the shoulder and bounced back over to Harry and Ron.

"What the ruddy hell was that all about?!" asked Ron, astonished.

"Oh, nothing. I do hope to see a bit more out of him soon, though." She went back to practicing with renewed zeal, humming to herself and smiling.


	3. Intentions Revealed

Granger. Malfoy lay awake that night drumming his fingers on his stomach reliving their conversation. Granger. She had come up to him halfway though a Charms lesson. He'd been working on one of the charms in earnest and nearly mastered it, and she just walked up and started giving him pointers. He'd never heard someone be so arrogant in his life. She had picked on everything from the angle of his wand to the spacing of his feet. He had tried to ignore her as hard as he could, just saying, "yeah, okay, whatever." To each insulting little critique, but, "and it'll never be done properly if you're tilting your head every which way like a rag doll when you do it! Where is your focus?" had been too far. He had turned and shot something like, "Listen, you pathetic little loser, has it occurred to you I might have something better to think about than which way my head is pointing at the moment?" and she had sent back a sentence he had no trouble remembering. "Oh, what, like whether to rearrange the pictures of your mum on your dresser tonight? We both know it isn't what you're going to wear on your next big date!" He had hoped, until this moment, people might respect his choice to step back from his social life. It was, in a way, a mark of integrity. He hoped it would be taken as such, as an indication that he felt remorse. Apparently it was being taken as an act of cowardice. Apparently others as saw him as as much of a loser as he saw himself. He couldn't remember what he had said next, but he knew he had shouted it and meant it to hurt her as much as she had hurt him, but she had smiled.

"There's the Draco Malfoy we were looking for." She paused for just a second, smiling at him, triumphant, though not self-righteous, and then flounced back over to her perpetual companions.

"There's the Draco Malfoy we were looking for." He rolled onto his belly and twisted his blanket between his feet. "There's the Draco Malfoy we were looking for." What the hell did that mean? How the hell do you interpret something like that? Did she hate his guts as much as he hated his? As much as she had seemed to for so many years? "I don't want your fucking pity, mudblood." He said out loud, into the dark. "I don't need anything from you, Granger. I'm Draco fucking Malfoy. Everyone loves me. They just need time. They just need…" he gulped and realized he was crying. "In a year, you look, I'll be on my way to something great and I'll be surrounded by friends and admirers. Just you wait, Granger, just you wait." He whimpered into his pillow and cried himself to sleep, immensely grateful not to have any roommates.

With one week left before winter holidays, students and teachers alike found themselves in a totally relaxed mood, fully caught up and very ready to be joined by the rest of the school. All of the rooms in the school that would be required for teaching, living etc were prepared and, in fact, most surpassed their states from before the destruction. The last Monday before the break, after lunch, with no more classes that day and no homework to speak of, the entire school participated in a snow battle of epic proportions on the great lawn. Various little forts sprung up here and there and the battle was a general free-for-all where chaos reigned.

Hermione Granger had a slightly different image of fun, however, and after being hit several times with the type of snow ball that goes right down your shirt, pants or rims of your boots and freezes you, she made her apologies to Harry and Ron and stomped up to the castle in a well cast shield charm bubble. As such, there were quite a lot of hollers of "Spoilsport!" and she was a target for everyone until she was safely through the front doors.

Lost for something else to do, she turned automatically to the only place she could always count on to provide entertainment, the library. Madame Pince would be returning with the rest of the students after the winter holidays and the library, it was admitted, was a significantly more relaxing place without her poking her nose around the corner to prevent even the most minor of infractions.

Upon entering the library, she moved as quietly as she always had, though she knew she would no longer be scolded for loudness; instinct prevailed. She only got halfway across to her usual table, though, before she became aware that she was not alone. She followed the gentle noises of pages turning and breathing around the shelves and stopped, just out of sight. Peeking, she could see the back of a silvery blond head. Malfoy. His feet were up on the desk and he was fully reclined in his chair. He seemed to have been there quite a while, and what was more, he seemed to be enjoying himself. He let out little chuckles every now and then, and once or twice tilted his head back and let out a real laugh.

She watched him, smiling, glad to see him laughing, for a full five minutes before a shift in her weight caused the book shelf she was leaning on to let out an audible creak.

Malfoy was on his feet with his wand drawn before she could blink. He faltered a moment when she stepped out from her hiding place and smiled at him. His wand arm fell. She took a few steps closer to him and looked at the book he had been reading which had now fallen to the floor. "Oh, I love that one! If Binns told history the way Rostus does, I bet it would be everyone's favorite subject. Have you gotten to the bit with the American Revolution yet? He's got a hilarious bit about the Minister of Magic at the time and how he thought all the magic folk in America would stay under his jurisdiction, even though the muggles weren't under British rule anymore. I nearly died laughing. You see, the American witches and wizards set up their own government and went about ruling themselves for seven years before he even realized he didn't have any power over them anymore, then, of course, he sends—"

"What do you want, Granger?"

"Nothing. I just came to the library to get a bit of studying done and you were here, so… I don't know. I was curious what you were up to."

"Up to? Think I'm plotting to have you all killed in your beds, do you?" He sat back down and turned his back to her, meaningfully.

"Don't be an idiot, you know that wasn't what I meant."

"What did you mean, then? Want to have a chat, Granger? Sit down and talk about our days? Reckon we can gab about Quidditch and the weather and whether Weasley will ever realize he doesn't do it for you?"

"What?" Hermione gasped. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?!"

"Nothing, forget it." He hit himself internally. It worked as an insult, but he wasn't going to be able to just end the conversation anymore. On top of that, he wasn't sure he wanted to hurt her that badly.

"Malfoy, what did you mean by that?" she demanded, walking around him so they were facing each other.

"You don't let him touch you, do you? I mean, I understand not making out all over the place, but if you pass him the butter, you let go too quick. You don't want him touching you at all." He suppressed the instinct to twist the knife with an added, "shagging the Weasel not all it's cracked up to be?"

She just stared at him for a moment, looking shocked and indecisive. Then she simply walked out of the library and went back to her room, where she threw herself in bed and sobbed herself sick.

Far across the castle, Draco Malfoy was walking slowly along a corridor back from the library, having lost any interest in his book, thinking hard.


	4. The Plot Thickens

The next day, on her way back from the bathroom, Hermione happened upon Malfoy in the hallway.

She walked quickly past him, dead set on ignoring him, but he grabbed her wrist and she spun around to pull it free. She hesitated on the spot just long enough to make eye contact and found a look of pleading and remorse such as she never could have expected. "I'm sorry. I really, really am." His eyes flicked back and forth between hers for a second and he turned and walked away. She stood for another minute, rooted to the spot. His vulnerability, his sincerity had caught her off guard. She saw things in his face then that she never could have seen when it had been clouded by loathing and arrogance. She saw his finely constructed features, his piercing eyes, his thick, arched eyebrows, his long, masculine jaw. Her heart seemed to speed up in her chest.

Just as she was about to continue on her way, Ron came around a corner and walked toward her. "Hey, Hermione, do you know what time we're supposed to go down to the train tomorrow, because—" he never finished his sentence because his mouth was filled suddenly with Hermione's tongue. She grabbed him by the collar and pulled herself in to him with a ferocity he had never seen in her, physically. "What's got into you?" He asked, with a little laugh.

"No idea." She looked at him for a second, thinking, and then grabbed his upper arm and dragged him down the hallway, turning left and then right, and entering an abandoned classroom.

"Hermione, what the hell are we doing?" Ron glanced nervously around at the assorted junk that had been stored here as Hermione led him through it to the end of the room where a large pile of pillows had been stacked. With one swift motion, she brought all the columns to the ground and then turned back to Ron.

"Please don't talk." She ripped at his robes and threw them on the floor so he was standing in his underclothes. She blinked at him. It was hardly the physique she had in mind. She closed her eyes and saw pale flesh. She saw thin, powerful arms. She saw a broad chest, toned to perfection. She removed her own robes and took a step towards Ron, her breathing heavy. She reached up into his hair. It was coarse and a little greasy. She pictured it fine and blond. She pulled his face to hers. His skin was rough and slick. She pictured it porcelain smooth. Her mind took her there, and she pulled him back onto the pillows behind her. He was no longer protesting, but groping her awkwardly. She thought of strong white fingers on her body and felt a shudder go through her. "Do it!" she breathed, and felt her undies being pulled clumsily off of her. No preamble. Just Ron, heavy on top of her, panting, and a pain between her legs. She opened her her eyes halfway through and started crying. Ron took no notice.

She cried from the pain. She cried because in one moment of weakness she had given up the chastity she had so meant to protect. She cried because she didn't understand what in that brief moment of honesty from Malfoy had brought her to this. She cried because the boy on top of her, the boy she was supposed to love, was not who she wanted there at all.


	5. Another Trip to the Library

Ron, urged on, spent the few days left before winter break stealing kisses from Hermione and wrapping his arms around her at every opportunity. Harry, much more observant than his enthusiastic best mate, picked up immediately that something was wrong. Though she tolerated the affection, it was obvious that Hermione was not only not seeking it, she could barely stand it. He caught revulsion on her face every time Ron touched her and noted, uncomfortably, that despite their complete lack of homework, she was sneaking off to the library with a rate to rival the one she had kept in the weeks before their OWLs, nipping off before breakfast and between almost every class.

"Um, that sounds good, I think I'll go with you." He blurted on Friday, after a moment's indecision. He knew this was his last chance before everything was lost in the swirl of winter break. She hovered in the half-standing position she had been in when she had announced her intentions and blinked.

"Okay, then." She said, slowly, and stood up. "Lets go then." She smiled and resumed her usual crispness.

She bubbled about what she had bought people for Christmas and how good it would be with her parents at the Burrow and how Mr. Weasley would love showing them around the grounds of a magical homestead.

"Hermione…" Harry kept trying to cut in as they grew closer and closer to library, though at a pace he considered distinctly less than should have been normal. She ignored him, however, and continued on about how good it would be to see Ginny and how she missed George and wondered how he was coping and wouldn't it be good to get the family together for the holiday or would it just underscore the missing member.

Harry was still trying in vain to move the subject over to her and Ron when they arrived at the library. She got suddenly still and seemed to be listening. They rounded a shelf and found, face upturned, expectantly from his book, clearly having heard them and wondering who was approaching, Draco Malfoy.

"Granger?" he smiled at first, as though the surprise was pleasing, and then his eyes fell on Harry and his face sank. "And Potter."

"Oh!" Hermione blushed. She looked rather flustered to Harry, something which confused him. "Malfoy. You're here. Um. How's it going?"

Harry laughed. "Never mind, we don't need this. There's no need to make small talk, he doesn't want—"

"How do you know what I want, Potter?" Malfoy spat the word as he had from their first year.

Harry, who was halfway turned to the door with his hand on Hermione's arm, stopped. "What do you want, Malfoy? Want to be friends? Want us to come and sit with you and tell you how our days have been? Want us to offer our shoulder's to cry on over your pathetic excuse for a social life?" He glared at Malfoy, ready to relish the look of shock and horror he expected to see on the face he so loathed, but Malfoy's eyes darted to Hermione, and when Harry looked at her too, he was the one to suffer a small shock. "What? What's funny?" He looked back to Malfoy and saw that he, too, was fighting a little smirk.

"Nothing, its just Malfoy said the same thing, almost exactly, to me, just a couple of days ago."

"It's nothing Potter, just an amusing coincidence. Look, have you come for something or was the sole purpose of your trip to bother me?"

This seemed a weak response to Harry. It was hardly the furious, biting kind of remark he was used to.

"We'll go if you need to concentrate." Hermione offered, pleasantly, and turned to walk out.

"Thanks." Malfoy yawned, and turned his face back down to his book.

Harry stood, torn, for a moment, and then ran after Hermione. "What the bloody hell was that about? When the hell did you turn chums with Draco motherfucking Malfoy?"

"We are not chums. I just ran into him in the library the other day, Monday, it must have been, and, well, we just talked a little. He insulted me, actually, but then he caught up to me the next day and apologized. It was nice, really. That's all. I haven't talked to him at all since that, but I feel a little differently about him. Its nice to know he's capable of something like a sincere apology. That there's a good heart behind the troubled, bad boy exterior."

Harry laughed out loud. "Troubled bad boy? Who is he, James Dean?"

Hermione blushed, deeply. "Oh, don't be silly, all I meant is, he… he has two sides. He's not all bad and I tend to feel if we can find the good in someone we ought to focus on that a bit, shouldn't we?" and she would hear no more on the subject.


	6. Complicated Things

The winter holidays were fairly uneventful. Harry was thrilled to see Ginny, who ran up to him at the train station and leapt into his arms. Holding her hand and cuddling up to her on the trip back to the Burrow, it was easy to ignore Ron and Hermione, bickering wildly beside them. They kept it up all break, more, even, then they had as friends, and Harry even caught her crying a few times in the room she was sharing with Ginny, when everyone else was off together at a meal or playing Quidditch in the yard. The bickering reached such a peak on the day before they were to go back to school that by the time they arrived at King's Cross, Ron was walking a few paces ahead of everyone, looking thoroughly annoyed, and Hermione walked a few paces behind, looking thoroughly put out.

Harry, who had experienced this uncomfortable silence before, chose to ignore the whole situation and snuggle up next to Ginny for most of the train ride, and distracted all of them by playing a game of exploding snap with her, Neville and Luna. Neville, Harry noticed, with his battle scars and reluctant hero status, was acting with much more confidence. He made Luna laugh constantly throughout the journey and, in fact, seemed to be openly flirting.

About three quarters of the way through the ride, when it was fully dark outside, Hermione announced pointedly that she was going to the bathroom, after having been growing visibly restless for the previous hour, her silence wearing on her.

As soon as the compartment door clicked shut, Ron threw his arms into the air from their long held position across his chest and uncrossed his legs. "Well, good to have HER out of here, isn't it?! Boy, is she being a pain." He looked around for confirmation. Harry and Ginny looked at the floor and Neville looked confused.

Luna, on the other hand, said, "I don't think so. She was rather quiet, actually. She seems very angry at you, too, and judging from past experience, I would have guessed it was you being mean to her, and not the other way around."

The silence that followed such a statement was absolute, and for several seconds Ron simply gaped at Luna, who smiled pleasantly back. After a time, he looked at Harry and Ginny, who very intentionally kept their eyes on the floor. Clearly getting the message, Ron let out an audible "Harumph." And recrossed himself, facing out the window determinedly.

After fifteen Hermione-less minutes, Harry also excused himself to the bathroom as a pretext to conduct a search, though simply getting out of the dense awkwardness of the compartment was reason enough.

He didn't have to look very far, however, before he spotted her. He did not call out or in any way make himself known, however, though not intentionally. It was simply that the sight that met his eyes shocked his intentions right out of him. It seemed someone else had gotten round to comforting her first, and his efforts seemed to have been much more effective than Harry's many attempts over the holidays. Hermione was talking enthusiastically and happily to Draco Malfoy. He took a few tentative steps closer to listen and heard Malfoy speaking in a voice he had never heard him use before. He was amused and excited by the conversation, but completely devoid of any of the animosity that usually accompanied these emotions in Malfoy.

"Sure, that's what I thought, but remember third year when Vector explained it he used a completely different set of variables. When I read what Forbes had written I thought for sure—" he stopped, and turned to Harry, as did Hermione, a beat later. "Potter." He did not spit the word as usual, but sounded rather as though he had been caught doing something wrong or embarrassing. "Better get my school robes on. Prefects setting an example, aren't we? Oh, and I suppose I'm head boy again, now that school is back in official session. Merlin, I haven't done anything yet. Oh well. See you, Granger." He walked away in the opposite direction from Harry, glancing back only half way and then thinking better of it.

"Hello, Harry. We ought to get our robes on as well, I suppose. Come on!" and she led the way back to their compartment. It was clear that there would be no discussion of the conversation he had just caught her in, and Harry was very sure that if he attempted to bring it up she would dismiss it as she had their encounter in the library.

Ron and Hermione got on quite well after a while, as he seemed to be feeling rather guilty when they got back and tried very hard to be extra nice to her and she, for her part, was cheered into forgiveness by her little bathroom break. They were even holding hands as they got off the train.

The feast welcoming the second, third, fourth and sixth years back into their restored school was a merry affair, though without a band.

Sleeping in Gryffindor tower again was another welcome change, and Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny had a grand time together in the common room that night.

On the other side of the castle, Draco Malfoy turned in his bed. Back in the Slytherin dorms, he had Zabini as a roommate. The greetings had been awkward, as they had been at school together since September without either making any attempt at conversation. Malfoy had been as friendly and cheerful as he could muster. The encounter had been reasonably pleasant and Malfoy had high hopes that he had communicated his no-hard-feelings message. His mind turned slowly to Hermione Granger. He had grudgingly admired her for years. She had always one-uped him in every class. He would, of course, have been first in their year had it not been for her. Much of his animosity towards her had been based on this. He rolled over again, thinking of her smile, how it warmed him to know someone cared.

She reached out and ran a finger down his bare chest with an unmistakable look of deepest desire in her eyes. Her big, brown eyes locked onto his as she started to unbutton her tight, thin, white shirt, revealing the lacy purple brassiere that had already been visible through the fabric she now peeled away from her sweaty torso. As she threw it aside, her eyelids flickered and she moaned in expectation. She stood before him now in only her underwear. Her lacy, purple underwear. She moaned again and ran a hand into her wild hair. Her other hand jumped to her neck and slid down between her breasts to her stomach, throwing her head back and moaning louder still. Her slim fingers slipped under the band of her undies and Malfoy sat straight up in bed. He looked around, a little frantic, still shaking off his dream. He froze for a moment, then, raising an eyebrow, he lifted his blanket and peered under it.

"Fuck. Well that complicates things."


	7. Further Complication

Following his dream and growing tired of his solitude, Malfoy found himself increasingly drawn to the captivating Miss Granger. They continued to meet in the library, though always "by chance," and no longer did they have it to themselves. The school was again bustling with its usual activity, full of cheerful students, well rested and happy to be back among their peers. Granger, of course, was always in the middle of a pack with the Weasleys and Potter. Luna Lovegood, Neville Longbottom and a bunch of the others who had participated in the war on the winning side were also hanging around a lot, which was appropriate because they were now together in a group revered more than any other.

"Pfff!" Malfoy muttered to himself, watching them at breakfast one day from across the Great Hall. "Longbottom, the epitome of cool? What is the world coming to." He smirked and saw Granger wave at him. Had she thought he'd been staring at her with that dumb grin on his face?! He blushed a little and redirected his attention to his cornflakes. After a few minutes he chanced a glance back up at her. Her big, thick mug of a boyfriend had his arm around her and was nuzzling her affectionately. She looked moderately miserable, though she was in fact smiling, however forcedly.

Unable to eat anymore and certainly without any social activities trying him to the place, Malfoy stood and ambled out of the hall. It was a Sunday, so he headed, as usual, along the passage to the library. There were never many people there this early in the morning, so he was hoping to get some privacy. He was quite right; it was deserted. He snatched a book he had been working his way through on his visits and sequestered himself in his favorite corner, where no one ever came. Warm and comfortable, he only managed to turn the page twice before he felt himself nodding and his eyelids heavy. Ah well, no point in stopping it, he thought, and let his eyes close and his head fall back against the wall.

Voldemort won the war, and his followers were prowling the corridors of Hogwarts, or was it the Ministry, immobilizing his enemies. It was a violent, horrible scene, and the air was full of screaming. Malfoy snuck around corners, peering into rooms where horrible torturing and murders were taking place. He saw Potter's head severed with repeated chants of "Sectumsempra" from person who changed from Snape into his father, then turned to him and said, "Ah, Draco, just in time, we have a job for you." He came into the room and saw, to his horror, Granger, chained to the floor and sobbing, clearly having been tortured. "You've got to kill her, Draco!" his father handed him, not a wand, but a sword. Malfoy turned and surveyed the room. All the Weasleys, Dumbledore, half the staff of the school, the whole stupid Order of the Pheonix and half the ministry stood watching with looks of horror and disgust on their faces. They hated him. They loathed him. They thought he was evil.

"Don't… please don't look at me that way!" he protested. "I have to do it! They'll kill me. They'll kill my whole family! She's going to die either way, why does it matter if it's me?! Please, I don't want to, I have to!"

He looked down at Hermione, lying on the floor, no longer sobbing, but now staring at him in disgust like her peers. "Who's making you Malfoy? Who's gonna force you?" He looked around and saw that though the room was full of the opposition, there was no one but his father from the Death Eater's side. His father, however, was not his father, but a great snake, rising from the floor and poised to strike him.

"I've got to do it, Granger, I've got to!" His hands were sweaty in their grip of the sword, and as he tried to raise it he found it was too heavy, it was growing larger and heavier until it, too, rose to strike him. "Please! I'm sorry! I have to do it! I don't have a choice!"

He tried, haphazardly to aim the great silver snake back at the girl on the floor, but it seemed determined to bite him. The ground around him, he found, was covered with great snakes, and one of them rose and began wrapping itself around his shoulders and shaking him from side to side. He knew if he could just kill Granger it would stop and he tried to struggle free from it to get back at her, but she rose from the floor and put her face in his. "Snap out of it, Malfoy! Draco, Draco wake up!"

He blinked. He looked down at his shoulder. There were no snakes there. Just soft, slender, firm hands. He looked back into the face in front of him. Concern. He was trying to kill her, why did she care if he was scared? He stopped struggling. Dream. Dream, I was dreaming. He sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Thank you."

She took her hands off his shoulders but stayed kneeling next to him. "Are you alright, Draco?"

"Yeah, yeah, I was just having a nightmare."

"I can tell, you're covered in sweat and you were yelling and thrashing around."

"Jesus, was I?" he wiped his forehead, he was indeed sweating and out of breath.

"Yes, you're white as a sheet and you were… um… well, you were saying my name."

Malfoy's eyes widened in terror. "Oh no, I wasn't!"

"Afraid so." She smiled apologetically.

"Oh, god." He bent over and put his face in his hands. "Could you be a friend and not ask why?" he muttered, muffled.

"Alright, but its going to drive me crazy." She put her hand back on his shoulder, gently, this time. "You're sure you're alright? I mean, nothing you need to talk about? I know we normally talk about books and things, but, um, if you need to really talk about something serious, I can. I'd be glad to." He looked up at her. "I worry about you, Draco. I do."

He just stared into her eyes for a moment, knowing exactly what he wanted to do more than anything, but knowing too that the odds of it going well were slim. He wasn't sure he could stand it another second while she sat there, her face inches from his own, looking so intimately caring.

This was it. He had to stop himself. He had to stand up, walk away, say something, anything to break the moment or he was going to go through with it, he knew it.

And he did.

He just sat forward the six inches it took and put his hand on her cheek to pull her, gently, so she could get out of it if she wanted, the other three inches to bring their faces together.

He did not kiss her at first, he just held her face with their lips not quite touching, his eyes closed, breathing her breath and waiting for her to pull away, to slap him, but she didn't, and he pressed his lips into hers, mouth slightly open, not pushing his luck, just a simple, straightforward kiss. After a second she opened her mouth a little further and a second after that her hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his neck. She was kissing him back in full, now, and his other hand went to her waist, pulling her warmth into him. Both her hands were in his hair now, and her tongue was in his mouth. She wanted it as badly as he did, he knew that now. There was a hunger in this kiss he had not expected to be reflected in her. A few seconds after this realization filled him with joy, a few seconds after something in his mind though, maybe, she tore her mouth away and pushed his hands roughly off of her body. She shoved him back down when he started to rise and ran from the library. He knew she continued her pace because he heard Madam Pince shouting at her about it after a period of time sufficient to carry her to the front entrance.

He sighed and slumped back against the wall, conflicted. "Now…" he mused aloud, "was that progress or not?"


	8. Declaration?

Harry was deeply confused by Hermione's behavior over the next couple of days. She seemed oddly excitable and easily distressed. She was overly warm to Ron and seemed to want to spend all her time with him and do whatever it took to make him happy, but then he would say something as simple as "I love you," and she would burst into tears and run from the room. In their discussions on the topic Ron and Harry had come to the conclusion that there was some odd girl thing going on that they were not meant to understand, but that, on the whole, Ron was doing much better with her than ever before. She didn't seem to want to fight with him at all. In fact, Harry observed, though Ron seemed so pleased he didn't bring it up, she seemed to do pretty much whatever he wanted without asking any questions at all. It was, Harry thought, privately, rather a weak shade of Hermione. He didn't miss the bickering at all, but he would have had it back happily to have the real Hermione back with it.

Another thing had, mysteriously, changed. Hermione was now not only not running off to the library all the time; she was straightforwardly avoiding the place. Harry mentioned once that he was going to get a book and Hermione chirped, "Oh, thank goodness. There's one I've been needing so badly! Do you suppose you could pick it up for me? And, um, could you take these back?" She reached under the table in the common room at which she, Neville and Ginny were working and drew up and enormous stack of books, which Harry hoisted into his arms only with great difficulty.

"Why don't you take them yourself?" Harry asked her. "You love the bleeding library. I thought you looked for any excuse to nip up there?"

"Yes, well, no time anymore, is there? Thanks, Harry, you're being a great help."

Harry was not at all satisfied with this response, but he was not sure how long he could maintain his grip on the mountain of books now teetering in his arms and decided not to prolong the matter.

His trip to the library involved quite a lot of squirming and sliding and barely catching, and he was very grateful indeed to be able to set them down in front of Madam Pince with a groan of relief and stretch his arms a bit. He looked down at the note Hermione had given him. It read, "Tales of the Heart: Applied Arithmancy in the Quest for Understanding Love by Wutherbod Luddugs."

The title amused Harry. "I guess that's pretty advanced stuff, then." He checked a reference and found a couple of aisles the book might be located on. The last one he checked was way in the back of the library, in an area where he had never been. He rounded the corner rereading the paper and when he looked up, he jumped. "Chrikey, Malfoy, you scared the shit out of me!"

"Shit yourself, have you? Only expected, I suppose. Well, don't hang round here too long, I'd been planning to stay a while and I'd hate the smell to drive me off."

Ignoring this, Harry started scanning the shelves for the section he wanted and then alphabetically for Wutherbod Luddugs. "Damn." The book was absent in the last place he had to check.

"What're you looking for?" Malfoy stood up and looked over his shoulder at the little row of books he had been searching.

"Nothing. Well, something, but it's none of your business, is it?"

"Fine. Just trying to help." Malfoy sounded casual but Harry thought he caught a little dissapointment as well.

"Well, it isn't here anyway, I'll just have to tell Herm—" but then his eyes fell on the book Malfoy had set, face down to save his place, on the table, before he stood up. His hand was on it again as he was about to start reading again. "is that… is that Wutherbod Luddugs?"

"Um, yeah." Malfoy looked mildly amused. "Why?"

"Well, that's what I'm looking for. I was just… That's funny. Anyway, I'll just tell her someone else's got it and she'll understand."

"Who?"

"Hermione."

Malfoy blinked. "Take it. I've read it before I was just skimming through. She can have it. Here." He closed the book and, still sitting, extended his arm toward Harry. Harry looked at it a moment.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, absolutely. No point in my hanging on to it. I don't need it. Take it." He shook it a little.

"Alright. Um, thanks… Malfoy." This was too odd.

He carried the books back to the common room and sat down at the table with Hermione Ginny and Neville, now also joined by Seamus and Dean. Harry sat, pointedly, between Ginny and Dean, who were much too close for his taste. "here you go." He said, and shoved Luddug's book at Hermione. It slid across the table and she caught it. She picked it up and opened it quickly, turning pages fast and looking for something. A bit of parchment fluttered out and onto the floor as she did so. She kept skimming pages until she found what she wanted and read, hungrily.

"Hermione," Seamus had picked up the parchment. "This has your name on it." He held it up and she stared at it. "Looks like a letter or something."

She took it from him and glanced it over. "I don't know what that could be, I…" but she stopped. "Oh, oh, I remember this." She blushed a little. "I, um, I must have left it in there the last time I had this book out. I doubt it gets taken out much." She let out a fake little laugh and pocketed the parchment. She let the others talk a couple of minutes while she gazed fixedly into space and then said, "well, I'm pretty tired. I think I'll turn in early tonight. See you!" and bustled up the stairs.

Harry stared at her retreating back. "Early? Its 8 o'clock! What is she playing at?"

Hermione lay in bed, rereading and rereading Draco's letter. It was beautiful and sad and she cried thinking about him. He spilled to her his years of torment, how a person can be swept up in something when their parents and all the people they respect tell them it is right and how much remorse he felt for his actions. How much he hated himself for his weakness. He told her all this, and then how, in his darkness, she had seemed a burning light. Her forgivness, which he did not assume, but which he hoped to receive, was guiding him. Her kindness rekindled a sense of promise and future in him and made him believe his life could have meaning again.

The last sentece of the long, long letter, squeezed onto a little leaf of paper, was this:

"Hermione Granger, I think I will never meet another human so good as you, nor one I love so well."

She read this sentence again and again. What did it mean? She was kind when no one else was and he loved her for it, yes, but what kind of love? What was implied in that word. She finally fell asleep with the letter clutched tightly in her hand and a smile on her face.


	9. Things Heat Up a Bit

I was told to start "heating things up a bit." Will this do? ; )

The next day's potions lesson was very long and tedious, as many lessons were now that they only had two months until they sat their NEWTs. At the end, Hermione was the first to stand, before the general hubbub of the class, packing their bags and discussing the lesson could begin. "Well, that was rather difficult. I think I may need to go to the library and get a bit of studying done while it's still fresh in my mind."

Harry thought she said this unnecessarily loudly, but he ignored it. "Good to hear you aren't shunning the place anymore."

"Don't be silly, Harry," she scoffed, tossing her bag over her shoulder and marching out of the room before anyone else. "I haven't been shunning the place. I told you, there just wasn't enough time."

A few minutes later Hermione was sitting, chewing her lip nervously, in the back section of the library where she had last run into Malfoy. Five minutes went by. Then another. She stared at her feet. She twiddled her thumbs. She paced back and forth.

"Granger, you are going to wear that carpet out."

She gasped and looked up.

"Mal— Draco."

"Were you, um, I sort of thought maybe from what you said in potions you might've wanted me to… I know its stupid, but I thought…"

"I got your letter." She blurted out.

"Oh." He looked embarrassed. "I know how you feel, of course, I mean, you've got Weasley and I suppose he's alright, I mean you were always friends and all but he always seemed like a bit of a prat to me, so I guess, I thought I ought to at least tell you."

"So, when you said you loved me, you really meant…?"

Malfoy was bright red now and staring at his feet. He looked like he wanted to crawl into the carpet beneath them and hide. "I… well… yeah, I guess. I mean…" but before he knew what was happening her arms were around his neck and her warm mouth was pressed against his own. Her fingers ran up the back of his head and grabbed his hair and her hips pressed into him.

So passionate and sudden was the kiss that it took Malfoy a couple of seconds to adjust. At first he just stood there, his arms hanging stupidly at his sides and his eyes wide open, but then his brain processed it and his arms wrapped around her waist, picking her up, just slightly, and depositing her a foot to her right, with her back against a bookshelf. In this position their mouths opened further and their tongues began to dance in each other's mouths. The desire was tangible and as Malfoy pressed himself against her and absorbed the warmth of another human for the first time in months. His hands slid from her waist up her sides, pushing into her and taking in every inch. They moved up, forcing her arms above her head and trailed all the way up to her hands. Their fingers interlocked and he held her fast there, kissing her with every particle of his being, willing it to go on, willing her not to push him away again. He felt a physical manifestation of his arousal pressing into her and pulled back, embarrassed, and felt her hands pull from his. His heart sank. It would all stop now. But her hands only went to the clasp on her robes, which she undid, throwing them aside, then to the hem of her tshirt, which she pulled off over her head.

For a moment, she took his breath away. He had thought her pretty, yes, but never imagined how she would look this way. She was just like in his dream: smooth and curving with a full woman's figure. He drew a little breath as she stepped toward him, looking him straight in the eyes, and he could tell that she was as scared as he was, but also as hungry. She turned her neck to him, and he kissed it. At first, he just touched it to his lips, but smelling it and feeling the softness and warmth, he couldn't hold back. He sucked at it and licked it, again trying to take as much of the experience with him as he could, barely able to believe it was real and sure it would dissapear at any moment.

His hands glided along her now bare skin and one stopped, with fingers spread wide, just under her breast. The top edge of his hand could just feel the grit of the lace rubbing against his fingers with each rock of her body. She let out a tiny moan, stifled for the benefit of the library, with so many people just out of sight and hearing, and he took it as a signal to go on. His hand moved under her bra and felt the excitingly supple flesh under it.

He realized, then, that her hands were fiddling with his robe as well, and with his free hand, he helped her, soon he, too, was robeless, and then her hands made him shirtless, and it was her turn to explore skin with mouth. He wound his fingers in her hair and stroked her back, then, as she kissed him again, on the mouth, lifted her off the floor and set her on the table so she was slightly taller than him. He was waiting for the invitation, and she gave it. She unbuckled his belt for him and he did the rest, removing his pants faster than he ever had in his life. She undid hers and waited for him to pull them off her, which he did, slow this time, and then, sweating from anticipation, he pulled off her underwear and gazed down between her legs.

She leaned back, expecting him to climb on top of her, but he lifted her hips, instead, and her legs draped over his shoulders, and pulled her to his mouth. She cried out, a little, when his tongue first touched her, and had to bite, hard, on her fingers, to keep herself quiet as he worked. One arm supported her and with his other hand he massaged her breast. He had never done anything like this before but he knew, somehow what to do, and his moves were expert. Her body quaked and shuddered and he knew to stop. He climbed on the table, over her, pinning her arms once again behind her head. Her legs wrapped around her waist and he finally pushed himself inside her.

Both of them bit down hard to stop from making sound, and Hermione pulled her hands from his to dig them into his back. The table rocked loudly on the ground as their pace quickened and Hermione let out a loud gasp in spite of herself. The table creaked and then came the sound of people talking. They stopped. "Madam Pince!" Hermione whispered, urgently.

Draco rolled off the table and helped her down, then grabbed all of their clothes and pulled her under the table where they had just concealed themselves when a large pink object with feet, (supposedly the lower half of the school librarian,) came into view. She muttered to whoever was with her, out of sight, and Draco sneaked his hand under Hermione's leg and back into the area he had so recently been engaged with. She gasped a little and looked at him, shaking her head desperately. His fingers slipped inside. Her eyes closed. She kept shaking her head, but then it fell to one side. Her nails dug into the carpet and her toes curled. Madam Pince still stood less than two meters away, but Malfoy continued nonetheless. Hermione's spine arched and her jaw clamped, and then released. Her mouth fell open and her breathing sped up, as quietly as possible. Madam Pince turned and walked away, and the moment she was out of sight Hermione was flat on her back and Malfoy was on top of her again. He dug deep into her and thrust, once, twice, three times, and on the fourth, they both came spectacularly and, only because Hermione pulled his face to hers right at that moment, nearly silently.


	10. Some Logic

"Harry James Potter, your nose is starting to explore regions where it does not belong. Get it out or I will cut it off for you!"

"But, Ginny, surely you've noticed! Yesterday she was putty in Ron's hands, today she could barely look at him! She wasn't eating anything at breakfast, either, she was just staring off into space! She started babbling about ancient runes when Ron tried to talk to her and she was stiff as a board when he kissed her. Then she fidgeted and looked all nervous right through transfiguration. And I mean, you're a girl. You get this stuff. We're hopeless about it!"

"Of course I've noticed! I choose to believe she's worried about NEWTs. You know her, it's the most important thing in the world! She's been preparing for this since she was about three years old!"

"Oh, Ginny, give over, she didn't know NEWTs existed when she was three years old."

"You know what I mean! Her whole life has been geared toward success, and this is how she frames it. If she does poorly,"

"But she wont!"

"Oh, Harry, that doesn't matter! She'll obsess about it until she knows."

"So you really don't think anything else is going on?"

"Well of course something else is going on. I'm just saying NEWTs have got to be exacerbating it immensely. It could be something tiny. Maybe she's got a big zit on her butt or something. That would explain why it hurt her to sit down this morning."

"Fine, if you're not worried about her, whatever. But I want to know what's going on."

"Nose. Face. One piece." She reminded him, ending the conversation by turning her attention back to her homework.

He slumped over the table and started spinning his quill absentmindedly. "Did she seem to have a bit of a glow to you, as well?" the thought started half formed, but then he sat up a little and paused. "Oh my god."

"What is it?" Ginny turned back to him in spite of herself.

"I think I just…" he came back to himself suddenly and sat up, grinning. "Nothing, dear!" he sang, and kissed her on the cheek before scampering off and out of the portrait hole.

Ginny shook her head, and, returning to her homework and chewing on her quill, muttered "Pff. Boys."


	11. Harry's Mind, Ron's Resolve

"Some mate you are, Ron!" Harry slapped his best friend on the back when at last he found him. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"I mean, I know why I don't tell you what Ginny and I get on to, I mean, she's your sister, and all, but why you couldn't have told me you and Hermione had—"

"Harry, what are you on about?!" Ron turned round in his seat and demanded.

"Trying to find out why you didn't let on you'd shagged Hermione!!"

Ron's jaw dropped. "Wh… how? Why? What?" he looked completely flabbergasted.

"Oh come off it. Havent you noticed the past week she'd been all odd and then this morning…?"

"Mate, we haven't really done anything in ages, and we only did it one time and it was kind of… well… it was over sort of quickly, and all…."

"Come off it!" Harry repeated. "How else could she be…" he bit his lip.

"What? How else could she be what?!"

"Well, you know… up the duff!"

Ron's jaw, already considerably slack, hit the floor. He turned pale. His eyes were wide. "The… the… the what?" he quavered.

"Ro-on! Hermione's pregnant!" Harry was giddy and grinning goofily.

Ron scratched his head. "Well, I guess that one time COULD have done it, I mean I didn't realize you could do it on the first time, especially if the girl doesn't… Wait, what are you on about? Why do you think she's pregnant?"

"Think about it! She's been all funny, lately, right? Maybe its hormones! Or maybe she'd missed her period and got nervous. Well, obviously she found out for sure last night cause now she's all worried what you'll say when she tells you. Poor kid, she must be so scared. You've got to go and talk to her!"

Ron had looked confused and shocked a moment ago, but now he looked positively terrified. "Talk?! To Hermione?! About this?!"

"Yeah. I think she'd feel a lot better if she knew that you were okay about it."

"Okay? You think I'm okay?"

"I mean if she knew you would, you know, do the honorable thing."

"And what," Ron gulped, "would that be?"

"You're gonna marry her, you fucking idiot!"

Ron looked sick. "Am I?" he croaked.

"Of course you are. If not you're a miserable, lowlife cunt and you deserve to be filleted alive."

"Oh." Ron chuckled in spite of himself. "Is that all?" He sighed. "Well, I suppose I'll have to, I?" He looked completely thrown and a little sick. "Listen, Harry, are you sure about all this?"

"Well, I don't have any conclusive evidence, but what else could it be? I mean, she's been acting all guilty and odd around you for a long time and today she could barely look at you! Before you got there, though, she was all fluttery and glowing!"

Ron smiled. "Glowing, eh? Well, it isn't my ideal, of course, I'd have liked to have waited a while, I mean, we're still teenagers! But not for long, really, and I always hoped I'd marry her and I knew I wanted kids…" He sat up straight, suddenly bright, all traces of apprehension gone from his face. "I'm gonna do it. I'll go now. I'll just tell her I know and I think it's great and I want us to do it together. My dad can get me a job at the Ministry first thing. It won't come till we're well out of school, we can finish just like normal and start our lives. She can still be an auror or whatever, she'll just have to put it off a few years. I can support her and the baby until then." By now Ron was looking positively delighted. He stood up, quickly, buttoning his jacket. He started striding away so quickly it took Harry a minute to catch up with him. When he did, Ron was muttering, "Always wanted kids. Wonder if they'll have her old teeth…"


	12. Closer

"Where's Hermione?" Ron demanded of his little sister when the boys reached the common room.

"No idea." Said Ginny. "What's with you?" she grinned at the stupid look of determination on Ron's face.

"Look, Ginny, this important. I haven't got time to explain myself!"

"Well," Ginny squared her jaw against the obvious implication that she was, yet again, not important enough to be included in the goings on of the golden trio and said, "I haven't seen her since she ran off at breakfast, so there's no point trying to get help from me."

"Come on, Ron, we can try the library." Harry grabbed his friend by the arm and steered him toward the portrait hole.

On the other side of the castle, in the darkest, most remote corner of the library Ron and Harry were now treading toward, the muffliato spell had been thoroughly cast in all directions. A sturdy torso, porcelain white, was dripping with sweat as the well defined stomach muscles contracted tightly and their owner muttered, "Oh, god," between clenched teeth.

The ancient carpet burned against his back as he rubbed against it, again and again, but he paid it no heed. His hands, just as strong and pale as his chest, dug into the supple, freckled thighs that were gripping his waist. One of the hands that matched those legs rose from its position, flat on the floor on either side of his face and slapped him.

He grabbed the wrists that attatched those hands to the long, graceful arms above him and rolled over, pinning them in the ample amounts of bushy brown hair that fell to the floor as he kissed her and began pumping, faster now, into her. Now it was her turn to have her back rubbed raw by the carpet. He released her wrists to slide his hands down so they gripped her back, just below her shoulder blades and lifted her, slightly to him, just in range that he could suck on her breast, just in range to make her scream with delight and her recently freed fingers scrape painfully along his back, unable to control them.

"Draco, I'm going to—" she panted, but then her words were lost as they both started the special moans reserved for the last seconds of passion. "Oh, Draco, God, oh, Draco, ahhh, ahhhhh…"

They both cried out, and then relaxed. He fell forward onto her and the rolled sideways, maintaining his grip on her so she rolled on top of him. He pulled her hair out of her face, where it was clinging in her sweat, and they kissed. There was passion in this kiss, yes, plenty, but there was a tenderness that betrayed the truth of this tryst. It was a kiss that could only be shared in true love.

The kiss ended and they lay, Draco on his back, Hermione on her side, draped across him, their legs and fingers intertwined, him stroking her hair with his eyes closed and a smile broad across his face.

There were a few minutes perfect silence, which felt strange in their little bubble that had been filled with the sounds of lovemaking for the previous two hours.

"Draco," Hermione punctured the silence after a reasonable waiting period.

"Hmm?" was all he could manage in response.

"Do you think we should, um, talk?"

"Talk? We talk. We talk plenty."

"Yes, we do, but I mean, specifically…"

"Oh." He said, opening his eyes and frowning at the ceiling. "That."

"Draco," she said, propping herself up on one elbow and running her fingers in loving circles across his chest. "I wouldn't mind doing what we're doing for a while and figuring it out later. In fact, I could do this forever! But I can't because, well,"

"The Weasel."

"Oh, don't call him that." She pulled her hand off of his chest.

"Sorry." There was a long pause while they both stared into space. "Do, um, do you love him? I mean, you two have been mates since you started here, practically, and you've been through so much together and everyone expects you to get married and have babies and everything. I mean, I would understand."

Hermione sighed and rolled onto her back so they were lying side by side. "Harry and Ron are my best friends. They have been for so long. With Harry there was never any question. He's my friend, its ridiculous to think of him as anything else. But with Ron… oh I don't know. It never occurred to me until fourth year, and then he was such an asshole about the whole thing with Viktor. It wasn't even until after we'd made up that I worked it out, and that was with Ginny's help. Then there was sort of this thing in our relationship, this weird… thing. And it didn't come to anything for so long! But I guess I liked the idea. I mean, I wasn't particularly fanciable, and—"

"Sorry to interrupt, I would just like to state for the record that we differ on that point."

"Very well." She grinned. "Consider it noted. But boys just didn't notice me that often and I think I liked the attention. Then, out of the blue two years ago, okay, not the blue, we had been fighting, but it took us all by surprise, anyway, he goes off and hooks up with Lavender Brown! I think that was when I realized how I felt about him. I was so jealous and actually a little heartbroken. That's when I realized I thought we were… I don't know… supposed to be together." She stopped here, feeling the hurtfulness of this statement on the person lying next to her.

"Do you still feel that way?" he asked, quietly.

"I don't think so. No. Maybe. Its like you said, mates for ages, went through so much, and he really loves me, besides! And it would work, you know, if we ended up together. It would last, I know it would. It would be a good marriage. But maybe there's something better, and I didn't think of that before and now with you… I cant help but think there's another option and maybe I shouldn't rush into anything."

"Well, I think I'm on that team."

"Draco, we've only been… you know, for a couple of days, but I want you to honestly tell me, do you think what we have could be something. I mean something real, something that would last."

There was silence. Malfoy ran through everything that had been filling his mind so completely for the past couple of weeks. Could he marry her? Could they have a life together?

"My father," He said at last, "would disinherit me."

"Oh." Her breath caught. That was it? His father would disinherit him? The man for whom he had expressed such loathing would take away his money and that was all there was to it?

"All my job options would disappear. He doesn't have the ministry influence he had just a couple years ago but he still has loyal ties enough and more importantly, enough money to send me shooting through the ranks or keep me unemployed as he sees fit. If I choose you, I can't promise any kind of life for either of us. And I'm not assuming you'd have me, either, but—"

"Hermione?!" Harry's voice rang from somewhere far off in the library.

"Oh my god." Hermione sat bolt upright.

"But, wait, see, the thing is—" Malfoy tried to finish his sentence.

"Hermione?!" This time the voice was Ron's, and it was getting closer.

"Oh my god!" Hermione leapt up and started pulling on clothing.

"Wait, no, I have to tell you this, just let me finish—"

"HERMIONE!?" Harry and Ron's voices together, just a couple of bookshelves away. Any second they were going to come around the corner and see her, half dressed, Malfoy naked on the floor.

She pulled on the last of her clothes and pointed her wand at herself for a fleeting moment, so the sweat and smells of love vanished and stepped out from behind the stack. "What?"

Malfoy could see the tips of noses and feet. She had just stopped them.

"Hi, Hermione, can we have a sit down?" They tipped alarmingly towards her.

"Not there, its covered in study stuff. I've been here all morning, working. Let's go anywhere else, I'm sick of this place.

Malfoy crouched in the dark, barely breathing, as the love of his life walked away, wishing he could scream the words he had been bursting to say, wishing he could call her back and declare his love for her, proclaim before everyone that nothing else mattered, that it was only the thought of offering a mediocre life to her that gave him pause, that we would never truly be happy with anyone else.


	13. Oops

News that Hermione Granger had agreed to marry Ron Weasley spread alarmingly quickly through the school, considering the only people who were supposed to know about it were the two involved, plus Harry and Ginny, who both insisted they had told no one. They decided that whatever portrait or ghost had overheard them and tattled, they were not going to deny it, and by the end of classes on Monday it was a well-known fact. There was a party in the Gryffindor common room that night, set up by Neville, who managed to sneak up a significant amount of butterbeer and firewhiskey, the latter of which he was responsibly only supplying to those who were of age.

"Neville!" a fourth year stamped his foot. "What is the point of sneaking alcohol into the castle if you wont give it to anyone who cant get it for themselves?!"

The party was a fun affair, really, with Ron getting fantastically intoxicated and standing on a table with Seamus singing _Flower of Scotland, _which Harry found a rather unlikely choice, and waving empty bottles around dangerously.

Hermione, meanwhile, was in a corner, surrounded by girls pressing her with questions about the proposal, her plans for the wedding, how it would affect her future, and so on. Hermione answered the questions in wavering tones, though, really, for the most part her answer was, "Haven't thought about it." After which all of the girls would burst into their own speculations and ideas. They, at least were having a merry enough time.

Harry noticed, however, that Hermione seemed a little down, so he fought his way to the center of the group to extricate her from it. "'scuse me. Sorry, Parvati. Could you budge up there, Romilda. Um, yes, good to see you as well. Hermione, a word?"

He glanced around to make sure no one was looking and then ushered her up the stairs to the boy's dormitory. They sat on his bed in silence for a while.

"Are you okay?" he asked, finally.

"I, I suppose so." She stared at her hands. "Harry, I don't understand all of this. I love Ronald, you know that, and I thought we would end up like this some day, but why now? What's he got to propose to me while we're still in school for? I just feel so rushed. I mean, I couldn't say no, could I? It would've ruined our relationship. We wouldn't have ended up together at all, most likely. There are just things I wanted to figure out about us and about myself before I got tied down like this. I just feel like suddenly my life isn't my life anymore, it's ours, and it should be that way yet! Not yet." Her voice caught, her nose wrinkled, and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

"Hermione…" Harry said slowly. "Don't you know why Ron proposed now rather than later? Didn't he say anything about it?"

"About what?" She wiped her eyes and looked up at Harry, curious.

"He knows, Hermione! We figured it out."

Hermione stared. "Knows about… what, exactly?"

"Well, you know, why you've been so odd lately."

Hermione stared some more. He couldn't possibly. If he did, he would have thrown a ft, not asked her to marry him. Harry would not be sitting here, holding her hand consolingly, he would be screaming in her face. "And what did you come up with?" she asked, controlling her face.

"The baby! Hermione, you're pregnant, aren't you?" Harry grinned at her, reassuringly.

She blinked.

"Aren't you?"

Her lips pursed, her eyes closed, and she turned away, her shoulders shaking slightly.

"There, there, Herm. Don't worry. Ron's proposed, hasn't he? It's all going to be alright. We'll work it out! You've got lots of friends, we'll take care of you." He took her face in his hands and turned it back toward him. He paused. What he had taken for crying was, in fact, laughter. "What? What's funny?!"

Hermione, no longer able to control herself, bent double, slapping her knees and roaring her amusement out loud. "You… You and Ron…" she managed, sucking for air, "you noticed I'd been acting odd so you… you figured I must be pregnant and you decided we had to get married!?" She fell back on the bed, laughing so hard she could no longer speak.

Harry gaped at her. "But you are… aren't you? I mean, what else…?"

"It hadn't occurred to you that NEWTs were less than a month away? That I killed people less than a year ago? That we're different people than we were last year, that our entire futures are about to be determined and I might be having a little trouble working out what I wanted right now?" She sat up, wiping her eyes and patting Harry's shoulder, patronizingly. "Oh, Harry, you boys really are hopeless."

Harry looked thunderstruck. "So you aren't pregnant?!"

"No! Of course not. Look, don't tell Ron we had this conversation, alright, just tell him I'm not pregnant and not to bring it up and we'll just continue with our lives as if nothing had happened, alright? Ron and I will be engaged for a few years before we get married and that's fine." The last signs of laughter died suddenly from her face. "Its not like anyone else is going to come and sweep me off my feet."

Harry, in his shock, completely missed the significance of these words. "No harm done then. I'm the world's greatest fucking asshole, but no harm done, anyway. Good. Okay." He stood up, running his hands through his hair and looking around a little wildly. "Right. Bollocks. Okay." And without another word, he left her there alone.

She giggled a little more for a couple of minutes, but then, thinking of the decidedness of her future, the love she had been denied just the previous day and the complete weight of the years to come, she succumbed to tears, and spent the rest of the evening lying on Harry's bed, wishing she were someone else.


	14. Chapter 14

Though he had been his usual lone figure in classes on Monday, Draco Malfoy was nowhere to be seen on Tuesday, and Hermione began to worry. She leaned back in her chair in Potions and spread the note he had slipped her the previous day open on the inside of her book, out of Ron and Harry's sight. Should she have gone to see him when he'd asked her to? Of course not, it was ridiculous. He mustn't have known then that Ron had asked her to marry him or that she had accepted when he had written it, for he had little access to gossip and it had been early in the day, but she was sure he knew by now. Regardless, Ron was no longer her goofy boyfriend. He was her fiancée now. They were going to be married and it was time she acted seriously. Ron was not just the boy who made everyone laugh; he was the man who was going to father her children. Any more silly trysts in the back of libraries were out of the question. Any love that could be fallen into so quickly was sure to be fallen out of again in no time.

She glanced back down at the note and mouthed the words, "so much more to be said," staring at them, thoughtfully for a few minutes before folding it up again and slipping it back in her bag.

She managed, in the end, to get her mind off the note, though only for a few hours. Three days later, though, when Malfoy had not returned to class, she began to get so worried about him she felt sick. She wasn't sure she was that relieved when he did show up again, and though he sent her several more notes and tried to catch her eye all the time, she avoided his gaze as well as she could, and was never alone outside Gryffindor tower, afraid he might get bold and approach her. She didn't think she could stand to talk to him again, when he filled her dreams in the little sleep she got and occupied so much of her waking thought already.

He gave up though, after a month. Though she still kept around her friends most of the time and kept telling herself it was for the best, Hermione looked desperately for any sign of a note left for her and even found herself glancing up in lessons to see if he was looking at her. One day she saw, with a stab of intense pain, that he was first out the door. His routine of waiting around and leaving last, trying to hint from across the room that she should do the same so they could talk, was broken. He had forgotten her.

She felt so heartbroken in that final stab of closure that she told Harry and Ron to go on without her, saying she felt ill and wanted to go up to the hospital wing.

She wasn't sure what she was going to do, (certainly _not_ the hospital wing,) when she turned a corridor and was pulled behind it. A hand muffled her scream and she struggled until she made eye contact with her assailant. His grip slackened as she relaxed, and as his hand fell from her mouth, she whispered, "Draco."

His hand, still on her face, tightened suddenly and pulled her into a rough kiss. She felt like he was trying to suck the life from her and pushed him off. "Stop it, Draco, I can't do this anymore!" She tried to walk away but he pulled her back and threw her, with just enough force to make her wince, against the wall. "Don't! Don't do this!" She whimpered.

"Please!" he was begging her, "Please, you have to listen! We have to talk! You can't just say you'll marry someone else! Haven't I told you I love you?!"

"Yes, well you also said being with me would ruin your perfect little life in your great big house and your comfy ministry job so if you will excuse me, I've got to get to—"

"Is that what you think?!" His arms, their strength now frightening instead of reassuring, pinned her where she stood. "You think I'd take that life over you?"

"That's what you said, wasn't it? That's what matters to you, Malfoy. I accept that. Now let me go!"

For a second she thought he had, as his arms disappeared from her sides, but then he had her wrist and was dragging her down the corridor. She squirmed and pulled, trying to get free, but he was much stronger than her and he was determined.

A few turns and two or three minutes later he pulled her through a door into a room she didn't know. It was small and warm and the lights were dim. It was perfect, actually, for the two of them, she thought.

"Listen to me, Hermione." He said, now standing feet away from her, looking at her feet and seeming suddenly damaged and scared. "There's nothing I want more than you. That life is what I've been told to want but I don't care. All I care about is you. My only concern in losing that life is that you wont like what I will be able to offer. I've spent every second since we were last together longing to be with you again. I thought we were going to be together. I thought you would let go of Weasley and then I hear…" He was crying now. "I hear you've said you'd marry him. That was supposed to be me. It has to be me." He looked up at her and she saw clearly how unwell he looked. His cheeks were wet with tears as he walked toward her and then fell to his knees. "Marry me, Hermione. No one could love you as much as me because no one has the ability to love as much as I love you. I would gladly accept days under the cruciatus curse to know I could spend my life with you. It couldn't be worse than the feeling that I'd lost you forever. Now you've let me taste life with you you cant take it away. Marry me Hermione, and I swear I'll find a way to make you happy."

Taken aback, shocked into silence, Hermione fell to her knees facing him. She leaned slightly forward and their lips met. It was a light kiss, and tender. It was not the kiss usually shared between people who know each other's bodies as well as this pair, but for children who know nothing of passion and are discovering something new with this act. When she pulled her face back and opened her eyes, she saw that his were still closed. He was crying in earnest now. She embraced him, tightly, and then unclasped his robes. He stood on his knees, weeping before her, as she undressed him from the waist up, and did not move as she moved around him, laying gentle, exploratory kisses on every part of his arms, his hands, his shoulders, his back, his chest and his neck.

She stroked his hair and kissed him again, but the kiss deepened, and soon they were on the floor, which was soft and warm and comfortable to lie on, rolling around with their need for each other's bodies returned in full.


	15. Chapter 15

"NEWTs are less than a week away. It's not like Hermione to miss a lesson like that. She didn't look that sick to me. Are you sure it isn't…?"

"Yes, Ron, I'm sure." Harry moaned. "She's just stressed because of the tests. You've seen how she's been. She's been depressed all month."

"S'pose we'd better go see her in the hospital wing? It's on the way."

"Yeah, lets."

But she was not there, and Madame Pomfrey informed them she had not seen Miss Granger at all for rather a long while.

"No worries. She must have gone back up to the dormitories. That's the sort of thing you sleep off, anyway." Ron nodded as Harry suggested they try it out with a jerk of his shoulder.

She was not there either. They had a third year check.

"Funny." Harry said. "Wonder where's she's got to. Want to check the marauder's map?"

"Yeah." Said Ron, who was not used to being out of sight of Hermione and was looking anxious.

"Calm down, I'm sure she's around. We've only been apart a couple of hours! I solemnly swear I am up to no good!" Said Harry, authoritatively, and then, "Hmmm. Doesn't seem to be in any classrooms or the library. Still not in the Hospital wing… or at Hagrid's. Hermione, where are you?"

"Gone to take a bath, maybe, to calm down?" Ron offered, but Harry shook his head as his eyes darted from bathroom to bathroom.

"Crikey!" Ron squawked. "She's been kidnapped!"

"Oh, for God's sake, Ron, I know where she is."

"You do!?"

And Harry did know, for he had lost people he loved to the assumption that someone not found on the Marauder's Map was leaving the school grounds.


	16. Chapter 16

Ron, whose legs were longer than Harry's and who was in rather a state of worry, had to be fed a near constant stream of comforting words all the way along four corridors and down two staircases. "I thought so too, but we haven't had any proof of it, have we? That's got to be incredibly powerful magic, to create something like that, hasn't it? It's probably more resilient than we've given it credit for. Its stupid to get worried when she's only been gone a few hours and we haven't checked everywhere, so will you please… SLOW DOWN!" Harry jogged a few steps forward and got a fist of the back of Ron's robes.

They turned the next two corners in silence, though at the end of the last corridor, Harry could no longer use reason to control Ron, and allowed him to dart around the corner ahead. He sped up immediately himself after the sound of a loud thump and a loud "Fucking shit, oh bugger it!" came from out of sight.

He rounded the corner to find Ron leaning over, his nose bleeding and his back leaned against a wall he had never seen before. "That's odd. Must have been part of the rebuilding. There should have been a corridor here."

"Neeh, I knew it was ver, I jess fot I would wook manweer wif some blood on me." Ron gargled through the copious red flow now staining his front.

"Christ, you look a mess." Harry put his hand under Ron's arm as he slid a little down the mysterious wall. "And you're getting a bit pale. Do you want me to have a go at it or should we go to Madam Ponfrey?"

"What? Affer deh nummer you did on Ginny's arm when she fehw lass practice?"

"Right." Harry grinned, pulling Ron's arm across his shoulders and starting back the way they came. "We'll drop you off and I'll find Hermione and send her up."

Ten minutes later Harry was back at the wall, which still had a big bloody spotch on it at Ron's noselevel. He glared at it, chewing his lip. "I know you better than this." He mumbled aloud. "You are smarter than this. You cant be gone. It's the only explaination." He crossed his arms, and as he did so he felt a crinkle under his robes and remembered he still had the Marauder's Map with him. He pulled it out, tapped it with his wand and muttered the very familiar, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," then watched as the parchment revealed the intricate, beautiful map of the castle it concealed.

He found himself standing at the end of the corridor where the room of requirement usually stood. The room itself was not on the map and never had been, he was expecting that, but there were many more things wrong with the image now. It showed the castle as it had been in his father's day. The wall now blocking his path was not there, and though expected, he found this frustrating. He spent a few minutes trying to find another way into the corridor besides walking all the way around the castle and trying the other side.

Just when he had given up and started to turn away, he paused, shrugged, and stepped to the side of where the corridor should have been, took a breath, and thought hard, 'I need to find Hermione,' over and over, walking back at forth in front of the room. When he opened his eyes, he let out a little whoop of victory. "Cool! A room in the castle only I know about AND now I know this is where Hermione is." He stepped boldly up to the door and lifted the latch, throwing it open.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and as he blinked in the dark, it occurred to him to wonder what it was Hermione would be doing here and feel apprehensive about what he was about to see.

He started to make out shapes and thought there was a person, or two people, lying on the floor. He gasped and took a step forward, momentarily convinced they were injured or dead, but then he understood. Sleeping. And they were tangled together. They were naked. He stood and stared, horrified, until one of the heads turned, sighed, and raised with a yawn. Draco Malfoy propped himself up on his elbows, blinking, like Harry, and looking around. His eyes snapped to Harry and he froze. His hand moved slowly to the woman's head on his stomach and he shook her slightly. She snorted a little and sat up too, rubbing her eyes. She looked at Malfoy and then turned, slowly, to see what he was looking at.


	17. Chapter 17

Hermione leapt to her feet and put several feet of distance between her and Malfoy, grabbing a conveniently placed blanket off the floor to cover herself. Harry pulled his wand and pointed it straight at Malfoy, his blood pumping hot through his veins and little red sparks spitting, barely controlled, from the end of his wand. Hermione whimpered and stepped back towards Malfoy to stand between them.

There was a long silence as no one moved. Hermione seemed to be crying as she watched Harry, though from anger or fear he did not know.

Harry waited in the doorway, staring coldly past Hermione at Malfoy, who kept himself huddled behind her, looking justifiably terrified at Harry's fury. "Step aside, Hermione, I'm gonna curse him into a thousand cowardly, blond bits!"

"No, Harry, you are not." Her tone startled him into dropping his wand arm a little and moving his eyes to her face. There was no anger there, nor fear, but anguish. The way she told him this was not adversarial, but matter of fact and desperately sad. He watched, his wand arm now at his side, as she turned back to face Malfoy.

"Draco. I think we both knew this couldn't last, no matter what we tried to fool ourselves into believing."

"What…?!" He gaped at her, totally uncomprehending. "How… how can you? You don't mean… No!"

"Draco, please. You and I just aren't supposed to be together. Think what kind of life that would be. Think what kind of friends we could have. Mine would abandon me if I married you and none of yours would be caught dead at a dinner table with me!"

"I haven't got any! You are all I have! And you're all I care about, anyway. I thought we said each other was all we needed. Hermione, please, please, no!"

"Goodbye, Draco." She reached down to the floor and grabbed her t-shirt, keeping herself covered with the blanket. She had just straightened up when Malfoy grabbed her, burying his face into the nape of her neck and sobbing unabashedly. "Draco." Her voice caught as she pushed him lightly from her and stood. "It's Ron I'm meant to be with. We…" she swallowed and it was very clear from her voice, though Harry could not see her face, that she was fighting back tears with every ounce of resolve. "Ron and I are good together. We can have a life together. What can you and I have?"

Malfoy, still kneeling on the bed, wrapped his arms around her torso and pressed the side of his face to her naked belly. "Love." He sputtered. "Love, love, I love you! I'll never love anyone like this! I need you, I'll die if you leave me! I'll waste away if I can't wake up with you in my arms every morning. If he gets to be the father of your children, if he gets to hold your hand when you're eighty, if he gets to hold you all his life, he'll never know what it means! He'll never know what he has and I will die!"

She stroked his hair and Harry, feeling sick, turned his back to them. "You won't die, Draco. You're much stronger than that."

Harry stepped out and muttered, "I'll wait for you, shall I?" over his shoulder before closing the door on them, knowing when the latch clicked that they were now alone in total darkness.

A few minutes later Hermione opened the door and stepped out, wiping tears from very red eyes. Harry thought he might hug her, but she led the way solemnly and quickly up the stairs and out into the sunlight.

"Are you, um, coming back to the common room?" Harry asked tentatively, after a few minutes silence.

"No, I don't think so Harry. I think I'm going to go see Buckbeak. I don't feel much like talking to anyone at the moment. She walked away, out in the direction of Hagrid's hut, leaving Harry feeling like a first class fool and the world's greatest ass. He had underestimated two people, one of them a dear friend, by a margin significant enough to rob him of his hunger for dinner that evening.

Ron failed to notice that the people sitting on either side of him were more or less silent through the entire meal, and gabbed happily with Neville, who had secured an apprenticeship at a new florist's in Diagon Alley pending an Outstanding NEWT in Herbology, which he expected to receive, and Acceptable in Charms, for which he had his fingers crossed.

After dinner, they made their way back up to the common room together, and Hermione let Ron hold her hand. Harry looked back over his shoulder at the Slytherin table, but could find no sign of Malfoy anywhere. He felt warmth against him and looked back around to see Ginny, who slipped her hand into his and whispered, "What's up?"

"Um," he looked at her for a minute. "Is it alright if I can't tell you? Its nothing to do with you, honest, its just not mine to tell."

"It's fine." She smiled reassuringly.

"God I love you." He said, and kissed her.


	18. Chapter 18 for real this time

Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. Ron and Hermione steered their two children through the crowds on platform nine and three-quarters, which was obscured by thick, white steam that was pouring from the scarlet Hogwarts Express. They found Harry, Ginny and their children, and stopped to talk on the platform while their children exchanged news and rumors. Ron joked with Harry about his recently completed driving test, but Harry was watching Hermione, who was smiling and participating in the conversation, but without keeping her eyes on any of their faces. She kept glancing behind her shoulders and rocking on the balls of her feet.

She got distracted after a crack of Ron's and had to bend down and pat her daughter Rosie on the shoulder, saying, "He doesn't mean it."

In this second, Rob got distracted too. Catching Harry's eye, he nodded covertly to a point some fifty yards away. "Look who it is."

Hermione froze halfway though straightening Hugo's collar. She stood very slowly to face the three people standing in sharp relief against the shifting mist.

The children glanced around at their still parents, confused, as Draco Malfoy turned and saw them, freezing too.

Harry, who was well out of Ron's sight line, grabbed Hermione's hand covertly and squeezed it tightly. She squeezed it back.

"So that's little Scorpius," said Ron under his breath. "Make sure you beat him in every test, Rosie. Thank god you inherited your mother's brains."

Hermione pulled her hand from Harry's and smacked Ron on the shoulder, her casual demeanor regained. Malfoy's head snapped back to front. Harry watched him take a deep breath and then turn, smiling, back to his son, to give him some last words of encouragement and goodbye before putting him on the train.

The families continued their pleasant final few minutes together, and though Hermione was acting almost perfectly normally, Ginny seemed to be doing most of the work, her eyes flitting from Hermione to where Malfoy was still standing far along the platform. She looked hard at Harry while Hermione and Ron kissed their daughter and nephews goodbye, and he looked back, communicating in the way only people best friends and couples can.

"It's got to have been at least fifteen years since I've seen Malfoy, eh?" Ron said as they walked slowly out of the station.

"Eighteen, dear." Hermione said, softly.

"I see him every now and then, for work." Ginny said, filling the silence.

"Great prat." Ron muttered.

"Ron, please, we've discussed it." Hermione whispered.

"Yeah, alright. Left us alone the last year of school, didn't he? Still. Seven years of being a prat, one year of being a non-entity…"

Ginny took in a breath and held it, clearly trying to think of a way to change the subject. She let it out sharply as they rounded a corner just outside and found themselves face to face with Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy, leaving through another exit.

There was a moment of swallowing in which only Mrs. Malfoy seemed unperturbed and only Ron seemed to be oblivious to the extra layers of awkwardness.

"Hello." Mrs. Malfoy stepped cautiously forward, offering an outstretched hand. "I'm Laura. It looks like our children are going to school together!" She was American.

They all introduced themselves, and though she was a porcelain beauty and a little snobbish, she was pleasant enough, and they spoke politely for a couple of minutes before offering cordial goodbyes and walking their separate ways, unlikely to speak ever again.


End file.
